Skyscrapers are scraping together

Now listening to: Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)

So I read a cool article in Time yesterday about the discovery of the gene that dictates how spiritual a person is, or rather determines their potential for spiritual experiences. I always find the space where science and religion come together very interesting. In the article it discusses how the need for religion may be hardwired into human code to help facilitate survival. How humanity needs a cosmic watchdog to make everyone obey the rules and play fair and how that increases the survival of our species.

Of course you could go the other way and say that god (or God if you prefer, I'm cool with either) put that gene in us so we would be aware of him. They had various religious leaders comment on the discovery and the Jewish guy argued that his God couldn't be reduced to a chemical reaction. The Buddhist, on the other hand, argued that the gene could be an indicator of who or what you were in a past life and dictate what type of life you will lead this time around.

That's why I tend to favor eastern religions personally, they seem so much more inclusive. I admit I don't live in the middle of Asia, where religious wars are fought between rival factions of the same religion, but Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism are less dogmatic in their basic ideas. The basis for the big western religions all starts with Thou shalt have no other gods before me, i.e. if you don't believe in the same thing I do you're an infidel. While the eastern religions believe you are pretty much destined to live the life you're living regardless. (Taoism is a little different, but it's even less dogmatic.) I guess it doesn't always work out that way, but I really don't like fundamentalists of any religion, particularly when they are intent on telling everyone how to live.

Moving to considerably less important topics, I'm about halfway through the third and final Halo book (yes I'm nerdy) and this one is better than the second, which was simply a retelling of the game story with a little more depth. I hope I can finish that today.

I also paid a bunch of bills and we all know how much fun that it. Still it's nice to be free of them for a moment. If I can be relatively frugal through Nov. I can relax in Dec. and enjoy myself...assuming I don't find a job between then and now.